Federico got the new version of
GdkPixbuf checked in. But he
forgot about the feature we needed for Nautilus. I was
really worried for a little while. Eventually he sent me
mail and said he'd take care of it. What a relief.

Well after I updated the GdkPixbuf use in three modules
(gtkhtml, eog, and nautilus), I went back to async. metadata
in Nautilus. And I managed to make it work! I'll be checking
in today.